Like most long-running organizations in any industry, the Detroit Pistons had built up their IT communications infrastructure organically, over time, adding new services and vendors when necessary. But after 30 years in the same location, the team’s corporate employees—in sales, support, marketing, HR, finance, etc.—found themselves trying to make do with a wide range of communications tools, many of which were inflexible and incompatible with each other.
The organization’s move to their newly-built training facility and corporate offices at the Henry Ford Detroit Pistons Performance Center served as the perfect opportunity for the IT team to reimagine the organization’s entire communications environment.
“Previously, managing our on-premises phone system was a challenge at times,” says Paul Rapier, the Pistons’ Vice President of Information Technology. “It took up time for maintenance and troubleshooting.”
Rather than trying to rebuild their legacy communications environment in the new offices, Paul decided that his team would find a more modern, cloud-based system that could work anywhere. “If we found the right solution,” he adds, “we would also be able to consolidate our other systems and vendors… for things like audio conferencing, faxing, video calls… into one environment.”
